So, we’re in the home stretch for a couple of things–
* Finishing HomeBird
* First edit of Hiding the Moon
* Filling out SCADS of paperwork
* The kids’ recital is Saturday
And while I’m riding the fine edge of exhaustion, none of it is particularly exciting to relate to you, but I DO have a brief story to tell.
You may notice Guest Dog Gibbs to the far left there. Now, Gibbs got to our house very well trained. All you’d have to do was say, “Gibby! Crate!” and she’d go to bed.
But see, I’ve been going to bed much later than Gibby is used to. So I was working last night until 2:30 a.m., and my own dogs had settled down on the couch and the beds at my feet. They’re comfy with that, it’s their jam. But Gibby doesn’t know the rules.
I mean, she thinks she knows the rules. She knows how to walk on a leash, and she knows how to be a good dog in public.
My dogs, uh, don’t.
So we’ll be walking and I’m tightening the leash and giving my dogs verbal cues about being good dogs, and good dogs don’t bark at other dogs, and Gibby is looking at me with this terrible confusion. She’s like, “I don’t understand what they’re doing!”
And last night was like that. I was sucked into my book and I didn’t pay attention and she didn’t understand what I was doing.
So I was out here under the lights and, hey, there was a perfectly nice man asleep in the dark and she figures, “Hey! I’ll do that!”
Until 2:30–when I realized she wasn’t there.
And I lost my shit. I mean, she’s small, she’s helpless, she’s clueless– what if she’d gone outside and not come back? What if she’d gotten stuck? Oh my God–I’d lost a dog in a closed house.
I started ripping through the house, calling her name, waking the kids up, and finally waking Mate up.
“Mate! Have you seen Gibby?”
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know!” (It was 2:30 in the fucking morning–I knew that!) “She disappeared!”
On impulse I started going through the laundry next to the bed, because the cat slept there sometimes, and accidentally tossed her up on the bed when I pulled up a T-shirt. She yelped and went trotting across the bed, and then went into her crate when I sent her.
I turned off all the lights and went to bed, and she whimpered, poor baby. She’d been happy. She’d been in the dark, happy, a nice person nearby, and now she was in the box? And worse, her new pack got to sleep in the room?
*sigh*
When I nap she sleeps with me–and the other dogs. I may have to uncrate her, because she really was sad.
So anyway, Mate got up this morning and hopped into the shower, and his phone started going off in the living room. Louder. And louder. And louder. I stumbled out of bed and t urned it off, then stumbled back, pulling the covers over my head. Ugh! The day star! It burned!
Mate got out of the shower and I whined. “Your phone! Oh God! Your phone!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s six in the morning!”
“You woke me up at two in the morning for the frickin’ dog.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What in the hell.”
“Go away and leave me alone to my fate. I’m dying.”
“Sure you are. Bye bye, I love you.”
“Love you too. I’ll wake up when it’s civilized and walk the dogs.”
I did. And it was hot, of course, by 10:30 in the morning.
So poor Gibby.
Her one photo op in all of this, and she finally fits in with the other dogs.
She’s as derpy as they come.
